Within hours of the announcement of Elvis Presley’s passing at home in his upstairs dressing room, thousands of mourning fans descended on his Graceland Mansion in Memphis Tennessee in an expression of grief, shock and stunned disbelief.
Elvis Fans Gather at Graceland
One year later, on the first anniversary of Elvis’s demise, a group of fans gathered at the gates to light candles and spend the evening together reminiscing. The following year there were more fans, and the year after that, the Austin-based Elvis Country Fan Club organised an opening ceremony.
Each successive year more people came, and when Graceland was opened to the public in 1982, fans suggested to management that the gates be opened during their candlelight tribute, to allow them to walk in single file up the driveway to Elvis’s final resting place and back again. This solemn procession has been the culmination of every Elvis Week since then.
Elvis Week in Memphis
Elvis Week usually runs from about 9 -17 August in Memphis. Thousand of visitors and Elvis Fans from across the world descend on this sweltering southern city on the muddy Mississippi River and turn it into a living shrine to the undisputed King of Rock and Roll.
During Elvis Week, the King's life is reenacted and dissected again and again. In a parking lot across the street from Graceland, Elvis Tribute Artists (ETAs), never Elvis impersonators, perform nonstop, free of charge.
16 August – the Culmination of Elvis Week
A typical 16 August on Memphis looks something like this: Night falls, but the heat of the day still hangs heavy in the southern air. A hushed crowd of between six and thirty thousand people fills the four-lane road in front of Graceland, which police have barricaded off.
Some people have been standing for hours in a snaking line. They want to be ready when the gates to Graceland open at 9 p.m. Patient veterans of the vigil sit in fold-up chairs, fanning themselves with souvenir Elvis Week brochures and drinking cold drinks from coolers, content to wait until the middle of the night when the crowds fade and they can get a turn to softly walk up the drive, past all rows of wreaths and lay a flower or teddy bear or a card where the King lies at rest in the family plot.
Elvis Fans Come From All Over The World to Memphis
Across Elvis Presley Boulevard, The King's velvet baritone voice booms "How Great Thou Art" from speakers in the trees to the faithful from across the globe. Some cry softly, others hold hands, many are dressed in Elvis-outfits or Elvis T-shirts; plenty of bald and grey heads to be seen but also many too young to even have been born when “Suspicious Minds” was the song on everyone’s lips.
To pass through the gates of Graceland, especially on the night of the annual vigil, is to make a pilgrimage unlike any other. It is a journey back to a time when things were more innocent, sweeter, slower, less complicated. Maybe that’s why the Elvis phenomenon is still going strong 30-something years after that fateful day on 16 August 1977 in Memphis, Tennessee when Graceland lost its King.
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